>>508819871 (OP)There still arenโt any non-Asian companies producing or designing CCD imaging chips. And while the basic idea was developed by Bell Labs /TI / Kodak in the 60s and 70s (mostly for defence/ spy satellites), the practical breakthroughs and commercial development (patents) were all wholly Sony, then Ikegama and Panasonic.
Why? Western private industry has given up on a lot of pure R&D research (like Bell Labs, or IBM,etc), because it doesnโt fit with investment capitalism demands for Q over Q returns; short term profiteering trumps long investment. Western universities now research the interesting stuff, mostly with Govnโt funding, maybe with a VC angel once something patentable becomes interesting; Japanese, Chinese, Korean companies are the ones to do something commercial with it and manufacture and scale it up. There just isnโt the western leadership management, C-Suite, sensibility for it. Western companies are all run by MBA Wall Street bean counters now, totally interchangeable, not engineers or scientists who intimately understand their companyโs technology products. Just take a look at Boeing